Indeed! My internet buffers sometimes too. But Radio Cymru is amazing.
Yep. Love it. Quite often put it on when I go to bed. Radio is usually fine. TV is the problem.
Forget the NBN, just give us respectable speeds to begin with ha
You have to be reasonably fluent to listen. With S4C you can use subtitles until you donāt need to!
@aran bach!! That was 815/6000, which is NOT a good percentage!!!
I started listening to radio Cymru long before I could understand. Music too - some albums for a couple of years. Every now and then I think ooo! I undertstand that line now. I still donāt understand everything on the radio, word for word, but my comprehension is growing. I try not to use subtitles when watching TV either. Iām better at factual shows than drama.
Thatās about 13%. To give you some context, itās common for companies to run their advertising on the basis of 1 sale for every 500 visitors.
We get an open rate of about 20% - so only about 1200 of your target 6000 have even had the chance to read the details in the email - and of those, not all of them will read it carefully from beginning to end.
So youāre running at about 65%+ of the people whoāve actually seen it - thereās no way youāre going to get much better results than that.
As I said, 13% is pretty good in this context.
I donāt understand a hell of a lot of it, just enough to get the gist. Find it oddly relaxing either way.
Grovel! One might think that by 74+ I might have learned patience and to limit my expectations! Too late now, I guess!
p.s. I started a topic, āEnglish Educationā. If you think itās too political and/or inappropriate, kill it!
Rather late to the conversation - sorry. Iām the Aled to whom Liz refers in her notes from last year.
Question:
How could SSi and Cymru aār Byd collaborate to facilitate a broader conversation and, subsequently, action around engaging people globally around our common love for Wales and its language? Suggestions on a postcard ā¦ or here, I guess. Iāll put it to the Cymru aār Byd people.
Cofion
Aled
No, the trick is to start listening BEFORE you can understand Radio Cymru. Put it on in the background when you are doing other tasks. Over time, you will find you understand more and more. When I first started doing this I thought I wasnāt understanding anything until I found myself telling my husband about a musician called Catrin Herbert whoād won a recording session in the Abbey road studio. Iām sure she said heaps of other interesting stuff that I didnāt understand but it made me realise I had understood something. Personally, I wouldnāt use subtitles with the TV either. Just accept that for half an hour you arenāt going to understand much and take it on the chin.
Aran may not agree?
I definitely agree. I also think that not trying to understand every word is the important bit. Listening to the context and letting it flow is important. Itās so hard unless you catch the beginning of a programme. If you join half way through itās difficult (still valuable).
If we try and understand every word I find I think ābachgen, I recognise that, thatās boyā meanwhile the story has moved on by at least a sentence or two and the context has gone.
Listening to the radio is definitely not reserved for the fluent!
Pigion is a great start as it is a manageable chunk and made with learners in mind.
I was just listening to Post Cyntaf but my mind had wandered to this conversation and understanding individual words. Then, my girlfriend looks at me looking confused - āWhat?ā I say. She then starts chatting about the programme that she thought Iād be listening tooā¦so sometimes its very much in the background
āTo every thing [Turn Turn Turn!]
there is a season, [Turn Turn Turn!]
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:ā
as Ecclesiastes has it (or as The Byrds sang it).
This is my way of suggesting that there is a time for background listening, and a time for concentrated listening.
On the whole (unless Iām driving, or painting a large wall or something like that), I prefer the latter, but at first, I could only take about 5 minutes at a time (this was listening to speaking only, not music and speech). Nowadays, I can manage much longer, and usually have pen in hand and scribble down the odd word or phrase, and look it up later. With the wonderful gift that is iPlayer, we can of course, listen to things over and over, if we choose to, and go back and listen more carefully if something catches our attention when listening casually.
Diolch! (Iām ashamed to say that I didnāt realise that she performed in Welsh).
Of course, we are all different. I did the background method - walking the dog, driving, shelving library books because it suited me. I didnāt do much concentrated listening as it didnāt appeal. We must each do what works for us.
Sheās absolutely wonderful! I think the words in ātroā are a direct translation from the English (lyrics originally by Pete Seeger), at least they are somewhat different from those in the William Morgan Beibl: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+3&version=BWM